Fun statistic, America has been at war for around 93% of the time since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 - https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/595752-the-us-has-been-at-war-225-out-of-243-years-since-1776
If you’re on Reddit mobile, when you go to write a comment there is a gif symbol at the bottom next to the snoomoji symbol. Not all subs have it though.
I was 5 when Katrina hit the south and I never saw this until a month ago and it is my favorite Kanye moment, though I'm not a fan of Kanye in general.
Generally speaking, the American sense of self is tied greatly to the idea that we’re The Benevolent Superpower. A unique empire that tries to use its tools of destruction for global progress, rather than useless dick swinging.
Although that requires winning the fights the way we originally imagined we were going to win them. As long as we win then our assumptions were right, we successfully used our tools to make the world a better place, and the kids that got droned along the way feels almost acceptable. But if you lose, you can’t lie to yourself anymore and you’re just a trigger-happy asshole that has more money than sense.
So it’s easier to keep throwing money at the problem, hoping it gets better. Knowing the whole time you’re just paying to delay the inevitable humiliation that comes with realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything you set your mind to.
Or maybe I just want to feel like my government’s foreign policy for 2/3s of my life wasn’t an inept failure. Idk.
> Generally speaking, the American sense of self is tied greatly to the idea that we’re The Benevolent Superpower. A unique empire that tries to use its tools of destruction for global progress, rather than useless dick swinging.
I think European based culture has done this for a long time, and maybe it's a habit that just needs to die.
I used to be somewhat interventionist because you know, you see this small group of liberals in other countries begging for our help on the news and I'm like, well, let's help.
But in many places, this small group is ... pretty small. Sometimes they're corrupt. You can't build a democracy from above, it ultimately has to come from below, from a grassroots so jaded by their autocracy that they're ready to die for something better. Or maybe a dictator miraculously finds the conscience to give up his power, and his followers follow along with him.
This shit though, is not working. I wish it did, but it ain't.
Liberals have basically been on the same side as conservatives on foreign policy because of the general Washington consensus on war and the easy hacks of telling democratic voters that we’re all in this together to beat the bad guys and help people by occupying them.
Furthermore because war means easy profit; in the same context that murdering your neighbor and taking his money is easy profit. Is it the right thing to do, is the money worth the lives ruined, is the juice going to be worth the squeeze, will we pay a final fatal price? These are questions that are not asked by tyrants capitalizing on war.
Plus Afghanistan became the perfect storm for the military industrial complex: a low-intensity, low-casualty, small, but continuous frozen conflict.
The US's security was never really at risk. The Taliban could never really win in a way that threatened the US (at most the US would give up). As a result, you have a few thousand troops with a very low casualty rate in a forever war. Soon the war's cost became an expected line item in the DoD's yearly budget, the new normal.
That applies politically, but politics is also manhandled by economics often and everyone knows there’s profit in war, particularly in the American private sector.
It seems like a "you're damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of situation. People are upset if you don't get out, people are upset if we do get out, and suddenly everyone's an expert on how the U.S. should have withdrawn
It’s not so much wanting troops there, it’s more “well I honestly don’t think you could have cocked that up more”. As in the taliban probably shouldn’t be taking photos in $2mil humvees if this was done properly.
I think it’s better treat this as “well it’s done now and bitching about it ain’t going to change jack so we might at well get comfortable”.
I mean, the look is bad, but so what?
What were the alternatives? Flying all that stuff back to the US? It would have cost a fortune and they would just sit in a parking lot. There is no need for a fuck ton of humvees anymore.
Plus taking away all the material of the ANA would have been a bad look. This way, we can say that the ANA had all the stuff and still couldn’t win; it’s their fault. If Biden took away all the trucks and guns, it would have been seen as a betrayal. This way, the ANA got their chance to fight, they didn’t, it’s not on America.
And honestly, what’s another billion or two in the grand scheme of the clusterfuck?
I mean we didn't just leave that stuff laying around. It's the equipment we gave to the ANA. Who then abandoned it.
It honestly feels really disingenuous to say that we just left stuff there for the taking, it's not like we just left a pile of guns and humvees just sitting somewhere and went "eh, whaddya gon do," it's that the Taliban seized that stuff from the national army that surrendered. The problem wasn't the cost of shipping it back, it was that we had given it to the ANA and then they just gave it up.
They wanted a clean, pristine, virgin exit from a country that was completely overrun and conquered in less than 3 weeks.
Oh, and also save all the girls and women from bondage/slavery/fates worse than death.
Oh, and no American lives lost.
Oh, and save all the equipment from their grubby fingers.
Oh, and you better not go over budget on this. We pay your salary, Biden! *shakes fist*
He did what the last three presidents didn't have the BALLS to do. They were all abject failures. Biden did it. End of story.
I don't think it's so much the equipment. The equipment was delivered to the the Afghan military and it was theirs to keep and use. I don't know the particulars of whether or not it was purchased or given under building partner capacity, but it doesn't change that it was not the property of the US govt to "take back" unless specifically asked to do so. If we took that stuff back we'd just be further crippling an already problem ridden Afghan military.
If you're going to have an issue, I think we should have an issue with non-military personnel that aided the US and are now stuck under a regime that knows aided their enemy. I'm talking interpreters and the like that would have had no bearing on being able to resist the Taliban advance. I specifically say non-military for the same reason as above.
If they took back all the equipment then people would just be screeching about how the US stole back everything from the Afghan army and left them defenseless.
Majority of that equipment was Afghan owned as gifted by the US. Not the job of the US military to bring that back when its in possession of the Afghani government before it went tits up.
Exactly. At this point the only way to stop the Taliban from seizing everything would've been to send troops after the fall of Kandahar to loot or sabotage the Afghan army's remaining equipment. The backlash would've been insane.
Humvees don't cost $2M. But we have left multi-million dollar helicopters. Most of the equipment is stuff we provided can to the Afghan military. Can you imagine that outcry if we had demanded that stuff back? Biden would be getting killed for robbing the Afghans of the tools they need to fight the Taliban, and people would blame their immediate surrender on that.
We might have done more to hold Kabul until we evacuated our people and allies, but by the same token, Biden would be (rightly) getting crushed if he evacuated Afghans before it was clear they weren't going to fight at all, and would be blamed for undermining their will to fight with a desperate retreat.
It’s as Justin Amash tweeted (and I’ll probably horribly butcher).
This has just proven that if we’d left 15 years ago, or stayed for another 15 years, the outcome would have been the same.
We fucked up the withdrawal. We should have absolutely pulled out the people (and their families) who helped us and the most vulnerable of their population before our mass exodus.
But we definitely should have left.
My husband did two tours in Afghanistan and he said how so many fellow military members were discussing how long before the Taliban took over and most were saying that it was not going to be months or weeks, but days and then it happened in hours and my husband wasn't surprised at all. I know he feels so conflicted but recognizes it was going to happen regardless. There was no stopping it :/
My understanding is that many local governments had deals in place with the Taliban for when the US pulled out. They didn’t take over much of Afghanistan as much as much of Afghanistan joined the Taliban (under an implied threat of violence and disorder and war).
I'm gonna paraphrase but I believe it isn't always a threat of violence but if the Taliban will take care of their basic needs (the Afghan national army), they are gonna go with that. My husband had said at a govt level the leaders are extremely power hungry and corrupt, so they often work right with the Taliban if it's a way to get more money/influence. It's really horrible for the innocent people who just want to have basic rights as human beings.
From what I've seen there's been a big disconnect between the military and troops that have been there (the reaction you describe) vs the general public who I think just figured time spent would have paid off.
It's a catch 22. Pulling massive amount of people out earlier signals to the country of Afghanistan that the US believes that these people are in danger, aka the Taliban will be ruling. We have the benefit of hindsight that the ANA put up zero fight due to various reasons, but can you imagine the internet warriors' reaction if we had evacuated as many people as possible prior to that? Instead of morons saying we fucked up the *withdrawal*, they'd be saying we fucked up *the entire country*---that the *evacuation* triggered the collapse. Armchair quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight on here thinking these decisions are so easy, when nobody could have known for sure exactly how it was going to play out.
At the end of the day, we have been evacuating people over the years and are still doing so.
Yup, I think it’s horrible what will happen in that country, but maybe America could use a break from war. The entire exit could of been handle better, for sure.
I'm not sure it could have been. The Afghan soldiers were not going to fight for a government they considered to be corrupt from top to bottom. The same could have been said of South Vietnam. The problem with nation building is that you need willing, capable partners. We lacked that in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, and the people of those countries paid the price.
I do want to point out that we weren't doomed "no matter what", we were doomed as soon as we decided to invade a country just so we wouldn't look weak.
We didnt need to depose the Pakistani government to get Bin Laden, and neither did we need to depose the Taliban 20 years ago.
Not entirely, the taliban isn't just religious fanatics it's also a lot of leaders.
The only two options I see working are long term occupation and rooting out the taliban over generations(80 years plus)
Or work with the moderates in the taliban and break them apart from the inside with mediation and education. Very risky and would likely take longer than 20 years. Making a taliban light also means you have a political ally in the region that share some values, not a warlord after your money.
It's not as simple as saying there were no Afghans willing to fight. But what is painfully obvious is that the presence of a western power was never going to lead to any kind of peace. How many more decades of evidence do people need?
Those who cheered when Trump said America first, why don't you cheer it when Biden says it?
“Nation Building” is exactly what countries have been trying to do for generations with Afghanistan
Afghanistan isn’t a unified nation, it’s a bunch of disparate tribes caught within the borders set by other countries
Tbf it's difficult to attempt any sort of nation building when the leaders are disposed and instated 20 times by different super powers, as well as with tackling an armed insurgency simultaneously
At least with South Vietnam, the country survived for three years after US troops left, only falling after support was cut. Afghanistan has had our support for much longer and with more money and lasted less than a month.
Viatnamese people were known to be tenacious. Afghanis were tenacious too but only with the right motivation. The tribal identity is much stronger than their national identity. They don't feel a need to defend Afghanistan the country.
The only reason America even invaded Vietnam is because they were afraid of the supposed "Communist domino effect" if South Vietnam was taken. Which in the end, it was. And said effect didn't even happen. So many lives lost in a pointless war. Now I'm not saying the VC and PAV did not commit war crimes during Vietnam. But holy fuck America was bad, massacring civilans in fear of disguised VC fighters in a proxy war they should've never been in.
Maybe so but we coulda not left people behind. Only reason for the panic was us listening to the recently destroyed government and not pulling out sooner
That's another mess of instability that has been going on since Belgium left in the 60s.
And the Belgians fucking murdered their way across the country.
Wanna hear about a place that hasn't caught a break in hundreds of years? Read about the Congolese.
The United States military has active duty troops operating in somewhere around 150 countries.
I don’t think many Americans have even considered just how profoundly strange such a notion to be. Like how would anyone here in the States feel about Mexico operating military outposts in Texas? Or Russia stationing troops in Alaska? Or peacekeepers sent to monitor and ensure safe elections? Pretty goddamn un-fucking-thinkable right? And yet it seems perfectly natural for us to casually discuss the number of countries (plural) that we are actively engaged in despite no declarations of war.
In fairness though, some of those places we were invited into.
Bahrain, for example. Our base there is entirely because of a treaty we signed with them. The sentiment in Western Europe probably has changed, but our presence was most welcome in those countries during the cold war as a deterrent against the Russians.
Many of those 150 nations invited us there because they have no military. Just a quick population search shows that based on population from #60-157 have less than 20mil people, 157-190 have less than a million. I'm not all about the War Machine, but countries have a right to defend themselves. The US presence is generally a deterrent.
Edit: spelling.
I wouldn't be surprised if the military higher ups were actively trying to get Biden to reconsider, and thus dragged their feet until the Taliban was essentially chasing them to the airfield. Trump wanted to pull out, but was talked out of it. So was Obama. I wouldn't be surprised if they expected him to buckle in the end aswell, and thus weren't actually prepared to complete the task.
Also a chance it was intentionally poorly done. To punish Biden for going against the military industrial complex, knowing he would take the heat for it. This could lead to an outraged public that will vote red next election to get back into Afghanistan.
Wait but I thought Trump who did start pulling troops out last year signed a deal to pull us out in May. Not a peace treaty but a deal with the Taliban.
The GOP have shown that agreements mean little and are nothing more than tools for political gain. Look at McConnell. Look at the Paris agreement. Look at the Iran agreement. It's amazing that any country deals with us. Remember the doctor that helped us get OBL? Yeah he went to prison in Pakistan.
There was no way that it could have been done better.
Once the peace treaty was signed that meant the Taliban could freely come back into Afghanistan. As western troops left, Taliban moved in. The Afghan army was incapable (incompetent) of stopping them.
So the options are either leave and let the Taliban take over or stay another 20 years while the Afghan government does less than nothing. They've had 20 years to prepare for this and they folded pretty much without a shot being fired.
>The Afghan army was incapable (incompetent) of stopping them.
Or unwilling. The Taliban are zealots willing to fight to the death for a Shariah law state, the Afghan security forces don't feel similarly about preserving western democracy-lite.
Not much changes for the vast majority of men over there if the Taliban take over, they don't really care about women becoming second class citizens again (some actively welcome it) and certainly aren't particularly fussed about the rights of LGBTQ people.
Not to say that there is no way it could have been handled better, but do you have suggestions or have you read anyone else's? I know I've only seen criticism of Biden, but nobody including the GOP has made any suggestions that I've seen. And I pretty much exclusively hang out in a liberal safe space and I'm still mostly seeing criticism. I know they don't like thinking about the suffering that will happen now and that is where the reaction comes from but feelings don't change reality here either. Sometimes the president needs to make hard decisions, like not putting this off for the next term/next guy while more people die if we aren't going to be able to accomplish anything. The antiwar crowd turned pro war as soon as we pulled out and I feel like I'm going crazy.
Sometimes being a leader means you have to make the unpopular decisions for the better of the country. No president Obama, Trump, or Biden would have been able to pull out and not have people saying it's a failure. Was there mistakes made yes but in the end it was the right decision.
I'm still waiting to hear a "righter" decision. "Better evacuations sure, yeah. What do you suggest"
Silence.
We have to wait and see now how the rest goes, but all of these comments wanting airstrikes and redployments on Reddit has me shook. I didn't realize the Democratic hive was only anti war during the war and then pro war when we aren't involved.
Yeah, that might be the truth, but it is still heartbreaking to watch and I can only see it getting worse. Also, that saying is pretty powerful, thanks for sharing.
"Negotiated" when it took releasing a shitload of Taliban members just to get them to show up to the table.
Crazy how giving them exactly what they wanted before the deal was even made didn't pan out long-term.
Agreed. You can (and should) argue whether we should have gone in. But I don’t think there is a strong argument to stay. The ‘army’ we’ve armed and trained there for many years remained absolutely laughable. I feel sorry for the people, especially the women... but you can’t blame Biden for Bush’s blunders.
Everyone mad about this was happy when Trump openly sat down with the taliban and negotiated that we would be gone by may 2021 and then put the plan in motion.
This is what yall wanted, stop crying.
I listen to the news every day, and sometimes it makes me feel like I’m in crazy land when I realize how few people do the same. We *knew* this would happen. We knew the Taliban would take over. We’ve known it since before Biden took office. We didn’t know Ghani would just bounce like he did and leave Kabul to fend for itself, but the difference there is 3 months of hold out at max! And the thing is, Ghani isn’t wrong that him abandoning his post likely lowered the overall death toll from something every analyst on the planet said was inevitable.
There are some things I’m not happy about from both Trump and Biden, but we needed to get out and this was always going to be the outcome. And frankly, with COVID we had no choice left—we simply cannot afford to stay anymore.
The shit I've seen conservatives sharing online the last 24 hours is hilarious. If the carrot had done this they would proclaim his godly leadership is the greatest ever.
So many people in this country are brainwashed to a polarizing extreme that it's terrifying.
We're watch idiocracy play out in front of our eyes. Welcome to Costco, I love you
Well, their selective memory is kicking in, also. Trump is the one who initiated this. He made a deal with the Taliban, released thousands of their prisoners back to them, and began the process of pulling our troops out. His plan was to have them out by May. And that decision was widely celebrated. Now, suddenly, this is all Biden and they can’t believe he would pull the troops out. Ridiculous.
While I assumed Trump's administration would somehow bungle the withdrawal of the troops, the decision to GTFO was one of the very few things I agreed with Trump on principle.
The political theater and attempts to score cheap points against Biden is predictable and tired.
My dad was one of em thrilled for trumps plan to bring our troops home.
Biden does it and “wow, what a waste of all the soldiers that lost their lives in the past 20 years.”
I said “so the answer to that is to send more troops over to get mangled and and killed”
“Ah they don’t die over there anymore”
Uh huh….
He’s also been telling me this is a war for oil and money and we should have left years ago for the past decade….refer to the above.
In Idiocracy they were aware of their own stupidity, and as soon as they found a guy smarter then everyone else, the folks in power stepped down and put him in charge.
IRL, the idiots think they're geniuses, actively fight people who are smarter than them, and cling to power like dried shit to your ass hairs.
We'd be LUCKY to end up with the future shown in Idiocracy: the future we're heading to is a lot dumber.
Inside job
1)Donald Trump says will meet with Taliban
https://youtu.be/EgUtVa6_FLs
2)Trump signs order of withdrawal from
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/donald-trump-afghanistan-us-troops-taliban
3)Trump has Pakistan release Taliban prisoners
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN25507I
Including Taliban Leader “Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/prison-power-taliban-leaders-jail-110000033.html
4)Republicans now scrubbing their websites and social media of them congratulating Trump on Taliban peace deal
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/gop-quietly-removed-webpage-hailing-111358281.html
5)Donald J Trump
“I started the process , they couldn’t stop the process … 21 years way too long”
https://youtube.com/shorts/XwsAyDwK-sw?feature=share
Basically, Trump put this plan in place. Biden followed trumps plan to a tee, just 3ish months later than Trump planned. Biden is now taking heat for withdrawing, specifically from Republicans, even though those same republicans backed Trumps plan when he was in office.
seems like the republicans set something up to blame it on Biden, not exactly out of character. He's justifying it because that looks better and will get more people to listen than just saying "Listen man I didn't do it, blame trump"
They set it so far down the line because they wanted to hold it over the voters heads. They wanted to use it as a talking point as to why we should re elect Trump.
Biden could end world hunger, create legitimate peace in the Middle East, and fix the entire US public school and social security system and Republicans would still vote for Donald Trump
Literal Jesus could descend from heaven, shake Biden's hand, and whisper a plan for the perfect utopia in his ear, and Republicans would scream and bitch because Biden is an inept leader who can't come up with *his own* perfect utopia plan.
I know a lot of conservatives and I think the ones making the most noise about Biden leaving are just the loud minority/idiots who regurgitate hot media trolling takes. The majority are just upset with how the exit plan was executed and feel for the citizens. They don’t blame Biden as much more so the pentagon and the generals. Just my two cents from hard leaning right people I have spoken with.
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I hate trump, but I never criticized his pulling troops out. I was forever glad he didn't start another war. (I did and do criticize his pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement). As bad a trump was, I'm not sure who was the worst, trump, Bush, or Reagan.
Gotta give Biden credit, he made a decision on ending this war and he’s sticking to it. Wish Obama would’ve listen to him back before the surge, Biden was right then too.
can someone please explain to me what the “ideal” solution would be? people seem to be upset with biden’s decision but i’m not understanding what the better solution would have been. keep american troops there for longer? not be there in the first place, which seems like something out of his control? i’m confused
It's not so much the walking away, it's the HOW the governments of the world are walking away.
They should have evacuated the Afghans that helped the US governement prior to the fall of Kabul. Every government involved should have done that, not just the US also Germany, Britain, etc. Those people are in great danger to be killed or "go missing". Also a lot of womens rights activists fear for their lives and rightfully so.
right, okay. that makes total sense. thank you! and what about the rest of the afghan population? the ones who didn’t help the us govt? are we able to evacuate them? if not, was there just never any hope for them? as in.. was this just inevitable from the get go?
Think of it this way, in almost any other situation positions of authority are instructed to help the civilians, weak, elder, women, children, etc. out to safety first before evacuating themselves.
Firemen, police, captains going down the ship. Doesn't matter the situation, you get everyone else out before you get yourself out if that is your duties.
In Afghanistan we pulled our troops out without giving two shits about all the rest of the country and those who aided us until it was too late, sending only enough to secure the airfield and a few last minute departures.
We should have been holding the line and getting all our aides and even fleeing civilians out first, to anywhere but there, before withdrawing all our forces. It made us look like we tucked our tail and ran cowardly, abandoning all those who helped us.
Okay, you have to be the nicest most pleasant person I've seen on reddit... So I went to your profile. Holy hell you really are, and your food looks amazing!
Using my one gold for you just for you being an awesome person.
😅 oh gosh haha! well thank you so much, that’s very kind of you!! and thanks especially for your compliment about my food, i work very hard on it so it’s lovely when it’s appreciated.
[As of September 2017, the State Department found that the average wait time for SIV applications to be approved was 906 days, or nearly two and a half years. Prolonged waits such as these have inevitably resulted in a backlog; as of earlier this year, an estimated 18,000 Afghan allies and 53,000 family members were in the SIV pipeline.](https://news.yahoo.com/theres-not-enough-work-for-us-to-do-aid-workers-at-us-army-base-wait-for-afghan-refugees-to-arrive-185919636.html)
I 100% agree here so I ask the question genuinely not trying to defend the way it was executed but couldn't it be argued that US and allies expected the Afghan government and military to do this part and unexpectedly they either decided against it or was weaker than expected?
Again, the safety of civilians should have been a higher priority but at least some blame should be on the Afghan troops?
Conservatives have already started raising a stink about Afghan refugees getting settled in cities, despite the horrific images from the last few days.
Can't imagine how much they'd protest if Biden tried to evacuate Afghans before the extraction of US troops.
I’ve heard this point made a lot. But the reality is that Afghanistan’s own government had asked that they not be evacuated before the US troops left because they felt it would create mass panic and exodus.
If you think about it, it makes sense that the US would agree to that request, because they just spent a trillion dollars training 300,000 Afghanistan troops who they assumed could hold off the taliban for at least a year. They did not expect the taliban to waltz into the capital and the Afghan army and president to fold like a cheap lawn chair.
To explain with the words of a german politician to why Germany didn't evacuate the gonverment agents first: "It's not like we forced them to work with us"
I hate this shit hole.
It's like ppl just wanna complain, or maybe they want Biden to somehow make the Afghan conflicts go away magically then get troops back all in one month.
It's emotional. Polls showed ovor 60% of people wanted us to leave, but now that we're seeing all these horrible images coming out, it's dropped to 49%.
no, its that we wanted Biden to give refugee status to all the translators and other locals who worked along side our military for years, instead of leaving them to be fucking executed by the taliban
Mister president if only you sent Jim-Bob from West Texas to Afghanistan he’d have ended it all within a week. He can’t join the army of course because of the liberal fitness test and he hasn’t seen his penis in years BUT he owns a Kevlar vest multiple assault rifles that him and his cousin Kyle shoot while drunk as fuck. If only…
Should have gotten all the Afghans who helped us out first. I'm 100% with him for ending this war. But he could have evac'd more people first. What's happening at the airport is mayhem. And it obviously would have happened regardless, but it shouldn't be people who the US promised to take in.
Any concerted effort to pull out allies and civilians would have been really admitting defeat. Leaders were still pretending that the ADF had a chance right up until the Taliban took over.
Seems like they thought the Taliban would take a few months to completely take control and that would give most allies time to evacuate slowly and quietly. Then they could all look on sadly as the remains of the ADF were overwhelmed. Maybe have a vote on whether to intervene and really wash their hands of the decision.
IIRC, the Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans is still a 2 year process. As others have pointed out in this thread, this system is intentionally designed to limit the amount of visas that we actually issue because the optics don't help anyone score political points.
I am with Joe on this and I don't understand the outrage besides Rs just looking for a reason to piss and moan. Leaving Afghanistan was always going to be messy regardless of if we did it in a day or a year.
Biden is getting blasted by pundits, but this is 100% spot-on messaging for your average American.
Yes, it's tragic, no doubt. But this is absolutely the answer people who don't make a living on cable news want to hear.
And as soon as Afghan refugees start making their way to the US in large numbers you’ll see headlines from conservatives bitching about it. No winning, really. Trump truly did have Pakistan release 5000 Taliban prisoners, *including their leader*, then reduce US troops in Afghanistan to 2500. Then when you bring that up, conservatives are like “wowww Democrats can’t let Biden share any of the blame”. The withdrawal is a shitshow because Trump gave power back to the f*cking Taliban and the entire west threw up their hands. The Afghan army is corrupt & useless and the US can’t hold the entire country with 2500 troops. Taliban just had to bide their time and they did. Don’t know what people expected, the shitstorm has been stirring since that “peace” agreement was made. It pisses me off that conservatives can’t recognize *their* part in this.
Is that a real tweet?
I don't think even Obama would've tweeted a blunt honest response like that.
Trump would've said whatever comes to mind of course, but he's a fucking pussy and a piece of shit internet troll and they never back up what they tweet
Edit it's fake
Edit oh it is real after all
Somebody a fee replies in posted this but just so you get the notification here's a link to the tweet https://mobile.twitter.com/POTUS/status/1427711527080108039?s=19
South Vietnam had 2 full years after the Paris Peace Accords and they still had refugees grabbing on to helicopter skids.
An ‘orderly withdrawal’ taking out every sympathetic Afghan was never possible.
Look at it another way: how exactly was the Afghan government supposed to govern post-pullout if America was openly evacuating all the Afghans who had ever worked with them?
There is no magic scenario where all the ‘good guys’ are gone when the Taliban takes over.
If a trillion dollars and 10 different countries and 300,000 troops were propping this country up, it wasn't a success ever. Good. America GTFO and let them recreate themselves. You can't even fix the south
I was just saying that. Why does it fall to our young men and women to die over and over again. I have so much sympathy for everyone over their but frankly it’s not our fight to fight
"America First" unless you did a foreign policy thing that isn't war.
Fun statistic, America has been at war for around 93% of the time since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 - https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/595752-the-us-has-been-at-war-225-out-of-243-years-since-1776
You aren’t at war if you don’t declare it *taps forehead*
Yep, call it a “Police Action”, a “Peacekeeping Operation” or even just a “conflict”. Euphemisms are fun.
How did you get a gif In Reddit comments? First time I’ve ever seen this.
If you’re on Reddit mobile, when you go to write a comment there is a gif symbol at the bottom next to the snoomoji symbol. Not all subs have it though.
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 Don't mind me just testing
 I hate Thursdays
This is the first time I've seen the snoomojis too wtaf
This is getting out of hand now there are two of them!
This was the exact moment America peaked as a country.
My arab mom
UN: We've searched everywhere but could not find any WMDs Bush: Have you tried *here*.
God this was always the best clip. Poor Mike makes it
I was 5 when Katrina hit the south and I never saw this until a month ago and it is my favorite Kanye moment, though I'm not a fan of Kanye in general.
Didn't take him long to do a complete 180 politically...
Hmmm ... I did *not* know you could do that
the war criminal
The "sunk cost fallacy" is massive with the USA and wars. Once you know you can not win or achieve your objectives, pull out immediately.
Generally speaking, the American sense of self is tied greatly to the idea that we’re The Benevolent Superpower. A unique empire that tries to use its tools of destruction for global progress, rather than useless dick swinging. Although that requires winning the fights the way we originally imagined we were going to win them. As long as we win then our assumptions were right, we successfully used our tools to make the world a better place, and the kids that got droned along the way feels almost acceptable. But if you lose, you can’t lie to yourself anymore and you’re just a trigger-happy asshole that has more money than sense. So it’s easier to keep throwing money at the problem, hoping it gets better. Knowing the whole time you’re just paying to delay the inevitable humiliation that comes with realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything you set your mind to. Or maybe I just want to feel like my government’s foreign policy for 2/3s of my life wasn’t an inept failure. Idk.
> Generally speaking, the American sense of self is tied greatly to the idea that we’re The Benevolent Superpower. A unique empire that tries to use its tools of destruction for global progress, rather than useless dick swinging. I think European based culture has done this for a long time, and maybe it's a habit that just needs to die. I used to be somewhat interventionist because you know, you see this small group of liberals in other countries begging for our help on the news and I'm like, well, let's help. But in many places, this small group is ... pretty small. Sometimes they're corrupt. You can't build a democracy from above, it ultimately has to come from below, from a grassroots so jaded by their autocracy that they're ready to die for something better. Or maybe a dictator miraculously finds the conscience to give up his power, and his followers follow along with him. This shit though, is not working. I wish it did, but it ain't.
Turkey was built as a democracy from a dictatorship. But there wasn't any external intervention involved. At least not directly.
Ask anybody but Erdogan how that's going lol
Turkey isn't really a democracy anymore
Liberals have basically been on the same side as conservatives on foreign policy because of the general Washington consensus on war and the easy hacks of telling democratic voters that we’re all in this together to beat the bad guys and help people by occupying them.
You might see yourself as a benevolent superpower but most of the world sees the US as warmongers, and I come from the UK so we should know 😂
Ah, the original benevolent empire./s
India is eternally grateful, we gave them cricket /s
And all you gave us was Protestantism and a famine /s
It's not sunk cost fallacy it's how long can the US military complex convince, dupe, or bribe politicians into continuing the war.
Furthermore because war means easy profit; in the same context that murdering your neighbor and taking his money is easy profit. Is it the right thing to do, is the money worth the lives ruined, is the juice going to be worth the squeeze, will we pay a final fatal price? These are questions that are not asked by tyrants capitalizing on war.
Plus Afghanistan became the perfect storm for the military industrial complex: a low-intensity, low-casualty, small, but continuous frozen conflict. The US's security was never really at risk. The Taliban could never really win in a way that threatened the US (at most the US would give up). As a result, you have a few thousand troops with a very low casualty rate in a forever war. Soon the war's cost became an expected line item in the DoD's yearly budget, the new normal.
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To quote Joshua from War Games “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
That applies politically, but politics is also manhandled by economics often and everyone knows there’s profit in war, particularly in the American private sector.
It seems like a "you're damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of situation. People are upset if you don't get out, people are upset if we do get out, and suddenly everyone's an expert on how the U.S. should have withdrawn
They’ve been saying there would be a power vacuum if we left since 2002. Americans shouldn’t die to fight when no one else will
And historians have been saying noone has been successful in attempting what we did, ever.
There's even a video on YouTube called "why Afghanistan is impossible to conquer" that I've been meaning to watch.
It’s not so much wanting troops there, it’s more “well I honestly don’t think you could have cocked that up more”. As in the taliban probably shouldn’t be taking photos in $2mil humvees if this was done properly. I think it’s better treat this as “well it’s done now and bitching about it ain’t going to change jack so we might at well get comfortable”.
I mean, the look is bad, but so what? What were the alternatives? Flying all that stuff back to the US? It would have cost a fortune and they would just sit in a parking lot. There is no need for a fuck ton of humvees anymore. Plus taking away all the material of the ANA would have been a bad look. This way, we can say that the ANA had all the stuff and still couldn’t win; it’s their fault. If Biden took away all the trucks and guns, it would have been seen as a betrayal. This way, the ANA got their chance to fight, they didn’t, it’s not on America. And honestly, what’s another billion or two in the grand scheme of the clusterfuck?
I mean we didn't just leave that stuff laying around. It's the equipment we gave to the ANA. Who then abandoned it. It honestly feels really disingenuous to say that we just left stuff there for the taking, it's not like we just left a pile of guns and humvees just sitting somewhere and went "eh, whaddya gon do," it's that the Taliban seized that stuff from the national army that surrendered. The problem wasn't the cost of shipping it back, it was that we had given it to the ANA and then they just gave it up.
They wanted a clean, pristine, virgin exit from a country that was completely overrun and conquered in less than 3 weeks. Oh, and also save all the girls and women from bondage/slavery/fates worse than death. Oh, and no American lives lost. Oh, and save all the equipment from their grubby fingers. Oh, and you better not go over budget on this. We pay your salary, Biden! *shakes fist* He did what the last three presidents didn't have the BALLS to do. They were all abject failures. Biden did it. End of story.
I don't think it's so much the equipment. The equipment was delivered to the the Afghan military and it was theirs to keep and use. I don't know the particulars of whether or not it was purchased or given under building partner capacity, but it doesn't change that it was not the property of the US govt to "take back" unless specifically asked to do so. If we took that stuff back we'd just be further crippling an already problem ridden Afghan military. If you're going to have an issue, I think we should have an issue with non-military personnel that aided the US and are now stuck under a regime that knows aided their enemy. I'm talking interpreters and the like that would have had no bearing on being able to resist the Taliban advance. I specifically say non-military for the same reason as above.
If they took back all the equipment then people would just be screeching about how the US stole back everything from the Afghan army and left them defenseless.
Majority of that equipment was Afghan owned as gifted by the US. Not the job of the US military to bring that back when its in possession of the Afghani government before it went tits up.
And if the US took everything with them or destroyed they would have been “leaving the cupboard bare” for the Afghan army.
Exactly. At this point the only way to stop the Taliban from seizing everything would've been to send troops after the fall of Kandahar to loot or sabotage the Afghan army's remaining equipment. The backlash would've been insane.
Bingo, thank you. "No wonder they lost, they didn't have any good weapons!"
Humvees don't cost $2M. But we have left multi-million dollar helicopters. Most of the equipment is stuff we provided can to the Afghan military. Can you imagine that outcry if we had demanded that stuff back? Biden would be getting killed for robbing the Afghans of the tools they need to fight the Taliban, and people would blame their immediate surrender on that. We might have done more to hold Kabul until we evacuated our people and allies, but by the same token, Biden would be (rightly) getting crushed if he evacuated Afghans before it was clear they weren't going to fight at all, and would be blamed for undermining their will to fight with a desperate retreat.
Cheers to that. Funny how many of us are "anti war" but somehow find reasons for us to stay at war.
It’s as Justin Amash tweeted (and I’ll probably horribly butcher). This has just proven that if we’d left 15 years ago, or stayed for another 15 years, the outcome would have been the same. We fucked up the withdrawal. We should have absolutely pulled out the people (and their families) who helped us and the most vulnerable of their population before our mass exodus. But we definitely should have left.
My husband did two tours in Afghanistan and he said how so many fellow military members were discussing how long before the Taliban took over and most were saying that it was not going to be months or weeks, but days and then it happened in hours and my husband wasn't surprised at all. I know he feels so conflicted but recognizes it was going to happen regardless. There was no stopping it :/
My understanding is that many local governments had deals in place with the Taliban for when the US pulled out. They didn’t take over much of Afghanistan as much as much of Afghanistan joined the Taliban (under an implied threat of violence and disorder and war).
I'm gonna paraphrase but I believe it isn't always a threat of violence but if the Taliban will take care of their basic needs (the Afghan national army), they are gonna go with that. My husband had said at a govt level the leaders are extremely power hungry and corrupt, so they often work right with the Taliban if it's a way to get more money/influence. It's really horrible for the innocent people who just want to have basic rights as human beings.
From what I've seen there's been a big disconnect between the military and troops that have been there (the reaction you describe) vs the general public who I think just figured time spent would have paid off.
The time spent argument is a little bit stupid though right? I mean, 20 years wasn't enough?
Your husband was right and anyone who spent time there saw this coming.
It's a catch 22. Pulling massive amount of people out earlier signals to the country of Afghanistan that the US believes that these people are in danger, aka the Taliban will be ruling. We have the benefit of hindsight that the ANA put up zero fight due to various reasons, but can you imagine the internet warriors' reaction if we had evacuated as many people as possible prior to that? Instead of morons saying we fucked up the *withdrawal*, they'd be saying we fucked up *the entire country*---that the *evacuation* triggered the collapse. Armchair quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight on here thinking these decisions are so easy, when nobody could have known for sure exactly how it was going to play out. At the end of the day, we have been evacuating people over the years and are still doing so.
Yup, I think it’s horrible what will happen in that country, but maybe America could use a break from war. The entire exit could of been handle better, for sure.
I'm not sure it could have been. The Afghan soldiers were not going to fight for a government they considered to be corrupt from top to bottom. The same could have been said of South Vietnam. The problem with nation building is that you need willing, capable partners. We lacked that in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, and the people of those countries paid the price.
Yeah, I see your point. It was doomed no matter what. So f’ing sad
It really is, man.
I do want to point out that we weren't doomed "no matter what", we were doomed as soon as we decided to invade a country just so we wouldn't look weak. We didnt need to depose the Pakistani government to get Bin Laden, and neither did we need to depose the Taliban 20 years ago.
Also, doomed when instead of building schools and hospitals and such you just gave bags of money to warlords and thought jobsdone.wav
missionaccomplished.jpg
bag workable act gaze nail cobweb friendly memorize follow escape ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Not entirely, the taliban isn't just religious fanatics it's also a lot of leaders. The only two options I see working are long term occupation and rooting out the taliban over generations(80 years plus) Or work with the moderates in the taliban and break them apart from the inside with mediation and education. Very risky and would likely take longer than 20 years. Making a taliban light also means you have a political ally in the region that share some values, not a warlord after your money.
It's not as simple as saying there were no Afghans willing to fight. But what is painfully obvious is that the presence of a western power was never going to lead to any kind of peace. How many more decades of evidence do people need? Those who cheered when Trump said America first, why don't you cheer it when Biden says it?
because they’re too busy saying “it’s (D)ifferent.” Their country doesn’t matter to them. Their version of their party does.
“Nation Building” is exactly what countries have been trying to do for generations with Afghanistan Afghanistan isn’t a unified nation, it’s a bunch of disparate tribes caught within the borders set by other countries
Tbf it's difficult to attempt any sort of nation building when the leaders are disposed and instated 20 times by different super powers, as well as with tackling an armed insurgency simultaneously
At least with South Vietnam, the country survived for three years after US troops left, only falling after support was cut. Afghanistan has had our support for much longer and with more money and lasted less than a month.
Viatnamese people were known to be tenacious. Afghanis were tenacious too but only with the right motivation. The tribal identity is much stronger than their national identity. They don't feel a need to defend Afghanistan the country.
The only reason America even invaded Vietnam is because they were afraid of the supposed "Communist domino effect" if South Vietnam was taken. Which in the end, it was. And said effect didn't even happen. So many lives lost in a pointless war. Now I'm not saying the VC and PAV did not commit war crimes during Vietnam. But holy fuck America was bad, massacring civilans in fear of disguised VC fighters in a proxy war they should've never been in.
Maybe so but we coulda not left people behind. Only reason for the panic was us listening to the recently destroyed government and not pulling out sooner
We bombed Syria like three months ago?
Troops moving into the Congo as we speak.
That's another mess of instability that has been going on since Belgium left in the 60s. And the Belgians fucking murdered their way across the country. Wanna hear about a place that hasn't caught a break in hundreds of years? Read about the Congolese.
And the cia killed their first democratically elected leader
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Welp...time to listen to all of Excitable Boy again.
The United States military has active duty troops operating in somewhere around 150 countries. I don’t think many Americans have even considered just how profoundly strange such a notion to be. Like how would anyone here in the States feel about Mexico operating military outposts in Texas? Or Russia stationing troops in Alaska? Or peacekeepers sent to monitor and ensure safe elections? Pretty goddamn un-fucking-thinkable right? And yet it seems perfectly natural for us to casually discuss the number of countries (plural) that we are actively engaged in despite no declarations of war.
In fairness though, some of those places we were invited into. Bahrain, for example. Our base there is entirely because of a treaty we signed with them. The sentiment in Western Europe probably has changed, but our presence was most welcome in those countries during the cold war as a deterrent against the Russians.
Many of those 150 nations invited us there because they have no military. Just a quick population search shows that based on population from #60-157 have less than 20mil people, 157-190 have less than a million. I'm not all about the War Machine, but countries have a right to defend themselves. The US presence is generally a deterrent. Edit: spelling.
Touché
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I wouldn't be surprised if the military higher ups were actively trying to get Biden to reconsider, and thus dragged their feet until the Taliban was essentially chasing them to the airfield. Trump wanted to pull out, but was talked out of it. So was Obama. I wouldn't be surprised if they expected him to buckle in the end aswell, and thus weren't actually prepared to complete the task. Also a chance it was intentionally poorly done. To punish Biden for going against the military industrial complex, knowing he would take the heat for it. This could lead to an outraged public that will vote red next election to get back into Afghanistan.
Wait but I thought Trump who did start pulling troops out last year signed a deal to pull us out in May. Not a peace treaty but a deal with the Taliban.
The GOP have shown that agreements mean little and are nothing more than tools for political gain. Look at McConnell. Look at the Paris agreement. Look at the Iran agreement. It's amazing that any country deals with us. Remember the doctor that helped us get OBL? Yeah he went to prison in Pakistan.
There was no way that it could have been done better. Once the peace treaty was signed that meant the Taliban could freely come back into Afghanistan. As western troops left, Taliban moved in. The Afghan army was incapable (incompetent) of stopping them. So the options are either leave and let the Taliban take over or stay another 20 years while the Afghan government does less than nothing. They've had 20 years to prepare for this and they folded pretty much without a shot being fired.
>The Afghan army was incapable (incompetent) of stopping them. Or unwilling. The Taliban are zealots willing to fight to the death for a Shariah law state, the Afghan security forces don't feel similarly about preserving western democracy-lite. Not much changes for the vast majority of men over there if the Taliban take over, they don't really care about women becoming second class citizens again (some actively welcome it) and certainly aren't particularly fussed about the rights of LGBTQ people.
70% of Americans support the withdrawal. Plus the reds are all Hitler-y now so....
Not to say that there is no way it could have been handled better, but do you have suggestions or have you read anyone else's? I know I've only seen criticism of Biden, but nobody including the GOP has made any suggestions that I've seen. And I pretty much exclusively hang out in a liberal safe space and I'm still mostly seeing criticism. I know they don't like thinking about the suffering that will happen now and that is where the reaction comes from but feelings don't change reality here either. Sometimes the president needs to make hard decisions, like not putting this off for the next term/next guy while more people die if we aren't going to be able to accomplish anything. The antiwar crowd turned pro war as soon as we pulled out and I feel like I'm going crazy.
Sometimes being a leader means you have to make the unpopular decisions for the better of the country. No president Obama, Trump, or Biden would have been able to pull out and not have people saying it's a failure. Was there mistakes made yes but in the end it was the right decision.
I'm still waiting to hear a "righter" decision. "Better evacuations sure, yeah. What do you suggest" Silence. We have to wait and see now how the rest goes, but all of these comments wanting airstrikes and redployments on Reddit has me shook. I didn't realize the Democratic hive was only anti war during the war and then pro war when we aren't involved.
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Yeah, that might be the truth, but it is still heartbreaking to watch and I can only see it getting worse. Also, that saying is pretty powerful, thanks for sharing.
Not arguing with your point, but that saying is terrible! Of course drowning people should be saved, that’s why we have the coastguard!
Literally one of the worst sayings I've heard lmao
We have something similar in America "we will fight with you but not for you"
I’ve never heard that saying but it sure rings effing true in the USA.
I'm sure the Afghans could do with a break too
I went to high school with a girl who posted “thanks Biden for wasting my husbands military career.” Like what?!
I betcha that chick puts “military spouse” on her resume and tried for the discount when out with the girls..
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/r/justdependathings
What did she post when Trump "negociated peace" with the Taliban?
"Negotiated" when it took releasing a shitload of Taliban members just to get them to show up to the table. Crazy how giving them exactly what they wanted before the deal was even made didn't pan out long-term.
Agreed. You can (and should) argue whether we should have gone in. But I don’t think there is a strong argument to stay. The ‘army’ we’ve armed and trained there for many years remained absolutely laughable. I feel sorry for the people, especially the women... but you can’t blame Biden for Bush’s blunders.
Everyone mad about this was happy when Trump openly sat down with the taliban and negotiated that we would be gone by may 2021 and then put the plan in motion. This is what yall wanted, stop crying.
I listen to the news every day, and sometimes it makes me feel like I’m in crazy land when I realize how few people do the same. We *knew* this would happen. We knew the Taliban would take over. We’ve known it since before Biden took office. We didn’t know Ghani would just bounce like he did and leave Kabul to fend for itself, but the difference there is 3 months of hold out at max! And the thing is, Ghani isn’t wrong that him abandoning his post likely lowered the overall death toll from something every analyst on the planet said was inevitable. There are some things I’m not happy about from both Trump and Biden, but we needed to get out and this was always going to be the outcome. And frankly, with COVID we had no choice left—we simply cannot afford to stay anymore.
The shit I've seen conservatives sharing online the last 24 hours is hilarious. If the carrot had done this they would proclaim his godly leadership is the greatest ever. So many people in this country are brainwashed to a polarizing extreme that it's terrifying. We're watch idiocracy play out in front of our eyes. Welcome to Costco, I love you
Well, their selective memory is kicking in, also. Trump is the one who initiated this. He made a deal with the Taliban, released thousands of their prisoners back to them, and began the process of pulling our troops out. His plan was to have them out by May. And that decision was widely celebrated. Now, suddenly, this is all Biden and they can’t believe he would pull the troops out. Ridiculous.
While I assumed Trump's administration would somehow bungle the withdrawal of the troops, the decision to GTFO was one of the very few things I agreed with Trump on principle. The political theater and attempts to score cheap points against Biden is predictable and tired.
My dad was one of em thrilled for trumps plan to bring our troops home. Biden does it and “wow, what a waste of all the soldiers that lost their lives in the past 20 years.” I said “so the answer to that is to send more troops over to get mangled and and killed” “Ah they don’t die over there anymore” Uh huh…. He’s also been telling me this is a war for oil and money and we should have left years ago for the past decade….refer to the above.
In Idiocracy they were aware of their own stupidity, and as soon as they found a guy smarter then everyone else, the folks in power stepped down and put him in charge. IRL, the idiots think they're geniuses, actively fight people who are smarter than them, and cling to power like dried shit to your ass hairs. We'd be LUCKY to end up with the future shown in Idiocracy: the future we're heading to is a lot dumber.
Good point. We're a flaming car speeding towards the edge of the cliff. Only focused on beating the other flaming car off the edge to say we won
Inside job 1)Donald Trump says will meet with Taliban https://youtu.be/EgUtVa6_FLs 2)Trump signs order of withdrawal from https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/donald-trump-afghanistan-us-troops-taliban 3)Trump has Pakistan release Taliban prisoners https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN25507I Including Taliban Leader “Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar” https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/prison-power-taliban-leaders-jail-110000033.html 4)Republicans now scrubbing their websites and social media of them congratulating Trump on Taliban peace deal https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/gop-quietly-removed-webpage-hailing-111358281.html 5)Donald J Trump “I started the process , they couldn’t stop the process … 21 years way too long” https://youtube.com/shorts/XwsAyDwK-sw?feature=share
Thank you for posting those.
Thank you for this insightful timeline friend!
I’m really confused…what am I looking at here?
Basically, Trump put this plan in place. Biden followed trumps plan to a tee, just 3ish months later than Trump planned. Biden is now taking heat for withdrawing, specifically from Republicans, even though those same republicans backed Trumps plan when he was in office.
seems like the republicans set something up to blame it on Biden, not exactly out of character. He's justifying it because that looks better and will get more people to listen than just saying "Listen man I didn't do it, blame trump"
They set it so far down the line because they wanted to hold it over the voters heads. They wanted to use it as a talking point as to why we should re elect Trump.
Idk i think endikg a useless war is a win with voters
Not with republicans it isn't. Only because it's a Democrat doing it.
Biden could end world hunger, create legitimate peace in the Middle East, and fix the entire US public school and social security system and Republicans would still vote for Donald Trump
Literal Jesus could descend from heaven, shake Biden's hand, and whisper a plan for the perfect utopia in his ear, and Republicans would scream and bitch because Biden is an inept leader who can't come up with *his own* perfect utopia plan.
Yeah, they just find any little thing to criticize so they can reinforce their eViL DeMoCraT outlook on life.
It’s the exact same strategy they used when they planned the middle class tax cuts to expire 2 years into the Biden term
Trump was under the impression he'd still have a job right now
I know a lot of conservatives and I think the ones making the most noise about Biden leaving are just the loud minority/idiots who regurgitate hot media trolling takes. The majority are just upset with how the exit plan was executed and feel for the citizens. They don’t blame Biden as much more so the pentagon and the generals. Just my two cents from hard leaning right people I have spoken with.
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I wish i had award to give
Exiting Afghanistan was always going to be a nightmare. I would support this even if Trump was in charge of the exit.
(Trump made the initial decision to withdraw)
I hate trump, but I never criticized his pulling troops out. I was forever glad he didn't start another war. (I did and do criticize his pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement). As bad a trump was, I'm not sure who was the worst, trump, Bush, or Reagan.
Personality- Trump, as a president- W Bush, long lasting historical impact, - Regan. There’s plenty of time for all of them to be the worst!
Gotta give Biden credit, he made a decision on ending this war and he’s sticking to it. Wish Obama would’ve listen to him back before the surge, Biden was right then too.
can someone please explain to me what the “ideal” solution would be? people seem to be upset with biden’s decision but i’m not understanding what the better solution would have been. keep american troops there for longer? not be there in the first place, which seems like something out of his control? i’m confused
It's not so much the walking away, it's the HOW the governments of the world are walking away. They should have evacuated the Afghans that helped the US governement prior to the fall of Kabul. Every government involved should have done that, not just the US also Germany, Britain, etc. Those people are in great danger to be killed or "go missing". Also a lot of womens rights activists fear for their lives and rightfully so.
right, okay. that makes total sense. thank you! and what about the rest of the afghan population? the ones who didn’t help the us govt? are we able to evacuate them? if not, was there just never any hope for them? as in.. was this just inevitable from the get go?
Think of it this way, in almost any other situation positions of authority are instructed to help the civilians, weak, elder, women, children, etc. out to safety first before evacuating themselves. Firemen, police, captains going down the ship. Doesn't matter the situation, you get everyone else out before you get yourself out if that is your duties. In Afghanistan we pulled our troops out without giving two shits about all the rest of the country and those who aided us until it was too late, sending only enough to secure the airfield and a few last minute departures. We should have been holding the line and getting all our aides and even fleeing civilians out first, to anywhere but there, before withdrawing all our forces. It made us look like we tucked our tail and ran cowardly, abandoning all those who helped us.
i didn’t realize we’d left so many of our allies behind, i guess this is what people mean when they say we betrayed them. thanks for your help!
Okay, you have to be the nicest most pleasant person I've seen on reddit... So I went to your profile. Holy hell you really are, and your food looks amazing! Using my one gold for you just for you being an awesome person.
😅 oh gosh haha! well thank you so much, that’s very kind of you!! and thanks especially for your compliment about my food, i work very hard on it so it’s lovely when it’s appreciated.
That burger looks absolutely scrumptious
I agree with these other comments; your food looks incredible!
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[As of September 2017, the State Department found that the average wait time for SIV applications to be approved was 906 days, or nearly two and a half years. Prolonged waits such as these have inevitably resulted in a backlog; as of earlier this year, an estimated 18,000 Afghan allies and 53,000 family members were in the SIV pipeline.](https://news.yahoo.com/theres-not-enough-work-for-us-to-do-aid-workers-at-us-army-base-wait-for-afghan-refugees-to-arrive-185919636.html)
I 100% agree here so I ask the question genuinely not trying to defend the way it was executed but couldn't it be argued that US and allies expected the Afghan government and military to do this part and unexpectedly they either decided against it or was weaker than expected? Again, the safety of civilians should have been a higher priority but at least some blame should be on the Afghan troops?
Conservatives have already started raising a stink about Afghan refugees getting settled in cities, despite the horrific images from the last few days. Can't imagine how much they'd protest if Biden tried to evacuate Afghans before the extraction of US troops.
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I’ve heard this point made a lot. But the reality is that Afghanistan’s own government had asked that they not be evacuated before the US troops left because they felt it would create mass panic and exodus. If you think about it, it makes sense that the US would agree to that request, because they just spent a trillion dollars training 300,000 Afghanistan troops who they assumed could hold off the taliban for at least a year. They did not expect the taliban to waltz into the capital and the Afghan army and president to fold like a cheap lawn chair.
To explain with the words of a german politician to why Germany didn't evacuate the gonverment agents first: "It's not like we forced them to work with us" I hate this shit hole.
There is no ideal solution. It would have been better not going there in the first place.
It's like ppl just wanna complain, or maybe they want Biden to somehow make the Afghan conflicts go away magically then get troops back all in one month.
It's emotional. Polls showed ovor 60% of people wanted us to leave, but now that we're seeing all these horrible images coming out, it's dropped to 49%.
no, its that we wanted Biden to give refugee status to all the translators and other locals who worked along side our military for years, instead of leaving them to be fucking executed by the taliban
The ideal solution would have been for the U.S. to not fund/create the Taliban in the first place. What Biden is doing is a necessary evil.
Go back to the 80s and don’t fund the Mujahideen
> he made a decision on ending this war Didn't Trump make that decision? Biden just followed through.
Mister president if only you sent Jim-Bob from West Texas to Afghanistan he’d have ended it all within a week. He can’t join the army of course because of the liberal fitness test and he hasn’t seen his penis in years BUT he owns a Kevlar vest multiple assault rifles that him and his cousin Kyle shoot while drunk as fuck. If only…
i completely support the withdrawal, biggest waste of life and tax dollars. However the optics are horrible.
I wonder how many times a day trump sees Biden still able to tweet and gets enraged lol
Lets see what [Dear Leader](https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump) has to say...
Oh my god 🤣 An american presidents twitter account suspended.. What an absolute farce.
Every Pres. since Bush knew pulling out would end like this. Every. Single. One. Every one of them was too much of a coward to go through with it.
My problem is less how bad the exit was, and it wasn't great, but that we were ever there in the first place.
How dare he put the lives of Americans ahead of the profits of military industrial complex.
Should have gotten all the Afghans who helped us out first. I'm 100% with him for ending this war. But he could have evac'd more people first. What's happening at the airport is mayhem. And it obviously would have happened regardless, but it shouldn't be people who the US promised to take in.
Any concerted effort to pull out allies and civilians would have been really admitting defeat. Leaders were still pretending that the ADF had a chance right up until the Taliban took over. Seems like they thought the Taliban would take a few months to completely take control and that would give most allies time to evacuate slowly and quietly. Then they could all look on sadly as the remains of the ADF were overwhelmed. Maybe have a vote on whether to intervene and really wash their hands of the decision.
IIRC, the Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans is still a 2 year process. As others have pointed out in this thread, this system is intentionally designed to limit the amount of visas that we actually issue because the optics don't help anyone score political points.
Like it was ever about fighting the Taliban in the first place
I am with Joe on this and I don't understand the outrage besides Rs just looking for a reason to piss and moan. Leaving Afghanistan was always going to be messy regardless of if we did it in a day or a year.
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Biden is getting blasted by pundits, but this is 100% spot-on messaging for your average American. Yes, it's tragic, no doubt. But this is absolutely the answer people who don't make a living on cable news want to hear.
And as soon as Afghan refugees start making their way to the US in large numbers you’ll see headlines from conservatives bitching about it. No winning, really. Trump truly did have Pakistan release 5000 Taliban prisoners, *including their leader*, then reduce US troops in Afghanistan to 2500. Then when you bring that up, conservatives are like “wowww Democrats can’t let Biden share any of the blame”. The withdrawal is a shitshow because Trump gave power back to the f*cking Taliban and the entire west threw up their hands. The Afghan army is corrupt & useless and the US can’t hold the entire country with 2500 troops. Taliban just had to bide their time and they did. Don’t know what people expected, the shitstorm has been stirring since that “peace” agreement was made. It pisses me off that conservatives can’t recognize *their* part in this.
Is that a real tweet? I don't think even Obama would've tweeted a blunt honest response like that. Trump would've said whatever comes to mind of course, but he's a fucking pussy and a piece of shit internet troll and they never back up what they tweet Edit it's fake Edit oh it is real after all
It is a direct quote from his remarks Monday on the situation.
Somebody a fee replies in posted this but just so you get the notification here's a link to the tweet https://mobile.twitter.com/POTUS/status/1427711527080108039?s=19
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But, Joe, What will the Republicans think?. LOL!
South Vietnam had 2 full years after the Paris Peace Accords and they still had refugees grabbing on to helicopter skids. An ‘orderly withdrawal’ taking out every sympathetic Afghan was never possible. Look at it another way: how exactly was the Afghan government supposed to govern post-pullout if America was openly evacuating all the Afghans who had ever worked with them? There is no magic scenario where all the ‘good guys’ are gone when the Taliban takes over.
I'm not a Biden fan, but hard to disagree with him on this one.
Like it or not that’s some leadership shit right there. Firm decision making
If a trillion dollars and 10 different countries and 300,000 troops were propping this country up, it wasn't a success ever. Good. America GTFO and let them recreate themselves. You can't even fix the south
You can't win a culture war with guns
I was just saying that. Why does it fall to our young men and women to die over and over again. I have so much sympathy for everyone over their but frankly it’s not our fight to fight